Green Initiative

Kumon Group Environmental Philosophy

In order to solve global environmental problems, it is necessary to combine the knowledge of people from all around the world. The Kumon Group strives to develop individuals who will make a contribution to society. Accordingly, the Kumon Group believes that one of our core values is to fulfill our responsibilities and obligations in regard to solving global environmental problems.

The Kumon Group views the preservation of the global environment as an important challenge to be met as we carry out our daily business activities. We will incorporate this environment-friendly vision into our business planning and will work on a permanent basis to protect our precious planet and sustain its natural resources for current and future generations.

Kumon Group Environmental Policy

The Kumon Group will endeavour, throughout all our business activities, to conserve natural resources and to preserve the natural environment through the development of human resources.

The Kumon Group will strive to recognise how our business activities affect the environment. We will work to conserve energy and resources, as well as to carry out recycling, in order to reduce the amount of waste we produce. Our overriding aim is to prevent damage to the environment and to reduce pollution.

The Kumon Group will work together with associated parties and business partners in order to reduce the impact of our activities on the environment. At the same time, we will act positively to protect the environment by promoting activities aimed at forest regeneration.

The Kumon Group will operate in compliance with the applicable laws and regulations in all of the countries and regions in which we have business activities, and will permanently work to preserve the environment.

The Kumon Group will strive to make each and every Kumon Associate more aware of environmental issues through education and consciousness-raising activities. At the same time, as a responsible corporate citizen, we will make information related to the environment publicly available.

KAO Green Initiatives

At Kumon, what we care about most is each individual child, it is with this in mind that Kumon Asia & Oceania (“KAO”) has been making efforts to open Centres in new areas and in new countries so that more children could have the opportunity to study with the Kumon Method. And, for the same children we care, we view the preservation of the global environment an area we cannot afford to neglect.

Hence in all our business activities, KAO endeavours to reduce the usage of Electricity and Paper and thus the CO2 emissions, and encourage Paper Recycling so as to reduce the organisational impact on the natural resources. We have launched Environmental Management (“EM”) efforts to reduce non-essential printing, power management, recycling. We measure our efforts using the following indicators.

Annual Usage Statistics

The efforts to reduce Electricity Usage made by Kumon Asia & Oceania (“KAO”) member countries had paid off in FY2016. Total Electricity Usage registered a reduction and was 98.8% of previous year, despite more learning Centres and offices were in operation during the year. Still, KAO will continue to practice energy-saving practices such as turning off lights when not in use, installing energy saving light bulbs and using motion sensors where possible.

KAO members have always been conscientious in making efforts to reduce paper usage. Examples of the effort include printing documents in a page, changing to smaller fonts, printing multiple-pages into 2 pages on 1 sheet etc. Despite these efforts, Paper Usage went up from 4.32 million sheets to 4.67 million sheets.

Paper recycling is a major area where KAO countries are putting in efforts to save the environment. Awareness has been raised through recycle paper collection boxes in the office to constantly remind staff to recycle paper where possible. Signs and posters are placed by some office building management to remind everyone to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The result for FY was encouraging, recycled paper increased from 6.03 tons to 6.93 tons.

CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming and electricity usage is one of the main sources of CO2 emission. Efforts are being made to decrease CO2 emissions whenever possible. With efforts put in by everyone, CO2 emission was up by only a small margin – 100.5%.

Example of environmental efforts in KAO

The Regional Support Office (“RSO”) of KAO has taken further steps to promote environment friendly activities in the office.

It has recently replaced the 2 copy cum fax cum printer machines with 2 that has Green Label awarded by the Singapore Environment Council (“SEC”). This is part of its effort to support go-green movements in the country. Green Label certifies that eco-friendly materials and technologies are used in the machine. SEC is a non-government organisation administering the eco-certification scheme in Singapore.

In addition, IT features are added to the 2 Green Label machines to help to reduce paper usage. Now, after a print job is sent, staff is required to go to the machine to select the job, and key in his/her personal ID and PIN before the job could be extracted. This would help to reduce paper usage as staff has a chance to cancel mistake and unnecessary printing job.